You had a personal branding shoot last year.
You got a lovely new headshot. Plenty of images for your website. You changed your LinkedIn profile photo. You even remembered to use some of them on Instagram.
Go you.
So surely you don’t need another branding shoot already?
Maybe not.
Because despite what someone trying to sell you another photoshoot might tell you, branding photographs don’t come with an expiry date.
Your face hasn’t suddenly become out of date because twelve months have passed.
But your business might have.
And that’s the important bit.
So, how often should you update your branding photos?
There isn’t a magic number.
For one small business owner, a branding shoot every year or two might give them absolutely everything they need.
For another, six months could be enough time for their existing image library to start feeling dated.
And for a business that’s constantly creating content, launching new things or marketing seasonally, smaller regular updates can make much more sense.
The question I’d ask isn’t:
“How old are my branding photos?”
It’s:
“Do the photographs I’ve got still represent the business I’m marketing today?”
If the answer is yes, brilliant. Keep using them.
If the answer is “wellllll… sort of”, we may have found our problem. 😂
Your face hasn't expired. Your content might have.
This is where I think people sometimes get confused about personal branding photography.
If all you needed was a photograph showing what you look like, we’d take one decent headshot and send you on your merry way.
Job done.
But your branding photographs have a much bigger job than that.
They’re helping you communicate.
They can show:
what you do,
how you do it,
what you sell,
what it’s like to work with you,
where you work,
what you’re talking about this week,
and a bit of the actual human behind the business.
Which means a photograph can still be a perfectly good photograph while no longer being particularly useful for what you need to say.
That distinction matters.
You don’t necessarily need more photographs.
You need photographs that are relevant to what you’re talking about now.
Your business might have changed even if you haven't
Jess, owner of The Rickety Desk, is a cracking example of this.
I’ve photographed her business more than once, and the reason isn’t because Jess suddenly stopped looking like Jess between photoshoots.
Her business story has evolved.
Her work as an illustrator has developed into children’s book illustration, and another string has been added to her bow with her origami workshops.
So the photographs she needs to talk about her business have changed too.
An image of Jess actually illustrating helps people understand her process and what she does.
Then we have this:
Suddenly the books themselves are part of the story.
If your work has developed into children’s book illustration, it makes rather a lot of sense to have photographs where people can actually see the books.
And then there’s this.
Because when you’ve added origami workshops to your business, your old photographs can’t magically start containing origami.
Apparently sometimes the marketing department also requires you to lie on the floor with a paper butterfly on your face.
I don’t make the rules. 😂
None of Jess’s earlier photographs suddenly became bad.
They simply couldn’t show parts of her business that didn’t exist when we took them.
That’s one of the clearest signs it might be time to update your branding photographs.
Have you added something new to your business?
Think about what’s changed since your last shoot.
Have you:
launched a new service?
created a new product?
published something?
changed premises?
started running workshops?
added a team member?
changed the way clients work with you?
rebranded?
started targeting a different type of customer?
If so, have a look at your existing image library.
Can you actually show any of that?
If not, your photography may have stopped keeping up with your business.
A photograph like this has a very specific job.
It gives Fiona (a holistic therapist) an image she can use when she’s talking about that particular product or the problem it helps with.
A lovely portrait of Fiona can’t do that job.
It isn’t a worse photograph.
It’s just communicating something completely different.
Sometimes your business hasn't changed. The season has.
And then we have Fiona.
Fiona gives us another reason why businesses can benefit from refreshing their photographs regularly.
Not because the business has fundamentally changed.
Because what she needs to market changes throughout the year.
Exhibit A:
Same woman.
Same business.
Same doorway.
Very different marketing photographs.
The winter version, complete with coat, hat and Christmas wreath, immediately gives us seasonal content.
The summer version with flowers and lighter clothing gives us something completely different.
Try promoting your lovely summer offering in July using a photograph of yourself standing underneath a Christmas wreath in a bobble hat.
People may have questions.
Seasonal branding photos aren't just for Christmas
Christmas is the really obvious example because the visual difference is enormous.
But seasonality can be much subtler.
Maybe your business changes what it talks about during spring and summer.
Perhaps you run events at particular times of year.
Maybe your products change.
Perhaps your audience’s problems are different in January than they are in June.
Or you simply want your content to feel current.
You don’t need four enormous branding shoots every year to achieve that.
Sometimes a handful of carefully planned seasonal images is enough to keep your content feeling fresh.
Your photographs should show what it's like to work with you
This is another big one.
Have a look through your current branding photographs.
How many are photographs of you?
And how many actually show what you do for another person?
Because they’re not the same thing.
This photograph tells us something a headshot can’t.
We can see Fiona interacting with somebody in her business environment. We get clues about the products around her, the atmosphere and the personal nature of what she does.
For lots of service-based businesses, that’s hugely valuable.
Your prospective customer isn’t only wondering:
“What does this person look like?”
They’re also wondering:
“What’s it going to be like when I’m the person standing there?”
Show them.
You might still need that good old headshot
None of this means the humble headshot has been banished.
Far from it.
You still need a strong photograph where we can clearly see your face.
LinkedIn. About pages. Speaker profiles. Press requests. Networking directories. Email signatures. Google Business Profile. All sorts of places need one.
And if your existing headshot still looks like you and still fits your brand?
Keep using it.
I’m a photographer. I’m not going to arrive at your house at midnight on its first birthday and confiscate it.
The point of refreshing your branding library isn’t to replace perfectly useful photographs for the sake of it.
It’s to fill the gaps.
Signs it might be time for new branding photos
Instead of putting a reminder in your calendar saying “branding photographs have now expired”, I’d watch for these clues.
You’re repeatedly using the same handful of images.
You’ve started avoiding certain photos because they don’t feel like your business anymore.
You’ve launched something you can’t visually show.
Your premises, products, team or services have changed.
Your website looks like one version of your business while your social media talks about another.
You’re planning a campaign and realise you don’t have an image that works for it.
You’re creating seasonal content with photographs that very obviously belong to another season.
Or you’ve found yourself scrolling through your gallery thinking:
“I’ve got loads of photographs. Why have I got nothing to post?”
That last one is usually the giveaway.
How often do small businesses need a branding shoot?
If you really want a rough guide, I’d think about it like this.
If your business is fairly stable and you don’t create huge amounts of content, every year or two may genuinely be plenty.
If you’re actively marketing your business through social media, blogs, newsletters and your website, every six to twelve months can help keep your library useful and varied.
And if you’re regularly launching, creating, promoting different services or working seasonally, smaller shoots throughout the year may make much more sense than trying to predict everything you’ll need in one giant annual session.
Which brings me rather neatly to something I created for exactly that reason.
Why I created Captivate Club
I kept seeing the same problem.
Small business owners didn’t necessarily need another enormous folder full of photographs.
They needed fresh, useful images at different points throughout the year.
Because what they needed to talk about in March wasn’t necessarily what they’d be promoting in November.
That’s where my Captivate Club comes in.
Rather than treating branding photography as something you do once and then forget about until your headshot starts looking suspiciously historical, it gives you regular opportunities to refresh your image library around what’s actually happening in your business.
The aim isn’t:
MORE PHOTOS!
It’s:
“I’ve got a photograph for that.”
Because that’s what a really useful branding library should feel like.
Your branding photos don't expire on a date
So, how often do you need new branding photographs?
When the photographs you’ve got stop representing the business you’re trying to market.
That might be six months.
It might be eighteen.
Or you might realise that the headshot you’ve had for three years is still absolutely fine, but you desperately need photographs of the new service you launched last Tuesday.
Your business doesn’t stand still.
Your photography doesn’t necessarily need to either.
And if you’re currently staring at your image library thinking “I’ve got loads of photographs but none of them show what I actually need to talk about”, that’s exactly the problem a good personal branding shoot should solve.
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